


Bedtime Stories

by saracenknows



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-26 03:01:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9859154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saracenknows/pseuds/saracenknows
Summary: The Pevensies stumbled back through the wardrobe and became children again, but they did not forget. Susan tried to pull them back, her brothers and her sister, because they would not be long for this world if they kept living in their dreams.As it turned out, she was right. At four minutes past three on a Tuesday afternoon, she got the phone call.





	

The thing was they were used to carrying burdens that were no longer there.

They had had years to learn how to shoulder the weight so that it was bearable, shaped their lives around their responsibility. They had learned to stand up straight even with the weight of the world on their shoulders.

And then they were back in the bodies of children and that responsibility was gone, and suddenly they were off-balance, stumbling on shaking limbs.

Peter searched desperately for something to carry, a weight to anchor him. He worked and worked and worked until he had something to work for, something to hold him down. Susan learnt her way around a world that tried to deny her strength, and found power where she could, in lipstick and heels, in carefully placed words and hard-earned smiles. Edmund went back to school and tried to fit in with boys who did not carry years of life in a child's bones, boys who did not ache from the guilt of a decision made years ago. Lucy drifted, and still danced with trees and sung to rivers.

The Pevensies stumbled back through the wardrobe and became children again, but they did not forget.

-

Peter studied for hours and then went home and worked even harder at something else. Press-ups, sit-ups, lunges. Peter lifted weights and went for early morning runs and worked for the strength he'd had before. It would not be the same. Lifting weights was not the same as wielding a sword, and his body knew that. His muscles would form differently this time. His arms would get bigger but they would not bear the scars of his training, the silver lines where he let his guard down and paid the price for it.

Susan did not get strong, at least not how Peter did. Her legs were weak, her arms not toned. She would have difficulty holding up her bow for any length of time now. Peter looked at her softness with disdain, but Susan knew better than to train for a battle you would never fight. So while Peter lifted weights and went on early morning runs, Susan sat in front of her mirror and practised applying lipstick and painting her nails, training for an entirely different sort of battle.

She had always won more wars with her words than her bow, anyway.

-

They were back in England, not hidden away in the safety of the countryside, but the war raged on, and Susan prayed that it would end before Peter was old enough to enlist, to go in search of another battle. With a sword in his hand he was magnificent, but this war seemed more about luck than skill.

They had all known battle, but Peter ached for it most of all, because Peter saw winning wars as the way to make a difference in the world. Edmund would fight for what he believed in, but he fought with kind acts and negotiations as well as swords and fists. Lucy was a warrior, too, but Father Christmas had given her the healing cordial first, the dagger second.

They said the war would be over by Christmas, but they had said that about the first one, too.

Susan prayed for her brother's safety, and then she put on her make-up and went to win some wars of her own.

-

The others scorned her, she knew, talked about how she had forgotten Narnia.

Susan hadn't forgotten. She still listened to the wind in the trees and tried to make out words, still woke up some days expecting to open her eyes to stone walls and flowing tapestries, not cracked plaster and peeling wallpaper. But she called Narnia a game because while it had been their reality once, it wasn't anymore. They scorned her for forgetting, but Susan saw little point in dreaming after a kingdom she could never return to. She tried to pull them back, her brothers and her sister, because they would not be long for this world if they kept living in their dreams.

As it turned out, she was right. At four minutes past three on a Tuesday afternoon, she got the phone call.

“I'm sorry,” said the voice on the phone. “It's everyone.” Peter, Edmund and Lucy. Their parents. Her cousin Eustace. Old Professor Digory. They were all gone. There had once been eight people in this world who knew of Narnia's splendour. Now there was only one.

Susan didn't know it, but she would be the last.

No one else alive knew the way the trees whispered and no one new ever would. The way dryads danced, the song of the nymphs; Susan would die with these memories, and they would die with her. Lucy would never turn eighteen. Only, no, that wasn't right. Lucy had turned eighteen under the bluest sky Susan had ever seen, and when evening came Lucy had danced coated in moonlight, dress floating around her, a garland of flowers in her hair and joy in her eyes.

“Lucy died at seventeen,” the priest said at the funeral, and Susan wanted to correct him. Not seventeen, she wanted to say. Lucy was thirty-three, by the end. Susan blinked back tears and pursed her lips against the words. “Her life was cut short,” the priest said. “But we must take solace in knowing that it was a life well lived.” Susan didn't long to correct him here, because this time he was right. Lucy's life was too short, even with those hidden years, but she had lived better than any of them.

Susan pressed her lips into a straight line and dug her nails into her palms and did not cry.

She stood straight-backed at the door of the church and thanked people for coming, and when she heard a great-aunt whisper something about bravery, she did not think of her own shaking hands but of Peter's swordplay and Edmund's face as he marched into battle to fight for what was right. She thought of Lucy, dashing across the battlefield, ducking beneath an onslaught of arrows to reach a wounded soldier.

Susan had worn make-up to the funeral and by the time she got home it had not smudged, not even a little. She shut the door behind her and let out a breath, and then she cried and cried and cried.

-

It was not over yet. In two days time she would go to Eustace's funeral and think of stories Ed and Lucy had told her, of dragons and treasure and a sea of lilies that led to the edge of the world.

She would go to Jill's funeral, too, and stand at the back. She would watch someone stand at the pulpit and talk of Jill's hard work at school, and Susan would think of the girl with a mischievous look in her eyes who had asked Susan a question about her archery technique. Susan had looked up from her book she was reading in surprise. She had looked at the child's earnest face and put the book down.

Peter had watched her; she could see him out of the corner of her eye. She had turned to Jill and tried to ignore him, the same way she tried to ignore her own painted nails, the softness of her arms. She did her best to teach, years out of practise and without a bow to demonstrate. When Jill had turned back to Eustace, Susan hadn't picked the book back up but instead watched her talk animatedly to Eustace. When she stopped to listen, she ran her fingertips over her hands and arms in a way that Susan recognised; searching for calluses that were no longer there, scars that she had left behind.

Susan shook the hands of Jill's parents without meeting their eyes.

Professor Digory's funeral was the only one she spoke at. She hadn't known Eustace well enough, had barely known Jill at all. She hadn't cried at the funeral of her siblings and parents, had stood straight-backed at the door to thank all those who attended, but she had pressed her hands together to stop them shaking and blinked back tears. Susan was not one to fool herself. She did not talk at the funeral of her sister and brothers because she couldn't, and because she couldn't tell any of the stories that were worth telling, anyway.

But she walked down the aisle at Digory Kirke's funeral in heels that clicked, and talked of a summer of wonder spent in his old house. (She didn't say that the wonder wasn't really found in the house at all, but through the back of a wardrobe they had stumbled into quite by accident.)

“We became different people that summer,” she said. “Better people.” (This was true. Peter the Magnificent, Susan the Gentle, Edmund the Just, Lucy the Valiant. They had grown up, become different, but they'd had years to do it, not just one summer.)

“My brother Edmund went in selfish,” she said. (Do not speak ill of the dead, said her mother's voice in her memory. Her brother had been dead for a week and a half, but that Edmund had been dead for years.) “He came out kind and fair,” she said. “We all changed for the better.”

She did not talk of the weight that they carried on their backs, the grief that they held between their shoulder blades, the longing written into their skin, the sorrow that had seeped into their bones. She wondered whether she should have said that about Edmund, putting his transformation of character down to the Professor's kind words, not his own mistakes, his own guilt, his own dedication, year after year, to make himself better. It didn't matter, she decided, looking out at the faces that looked back at her, grateful for her words. Funerals were for the living, not the dead.

“Professor Digory Kirke opened my eyes,” she said, “and showed me the magic of the world.” (Not our world, she didn't say. Not this one.) “He opened my eyes,” she said again. “And I intend to keep them open.”

She went to the funeral of Polly Plummer, too, a silent spectator in black. She had never met Polly, but she had heard stories about her, spoken from both Narnian and Earthly mouths alike. They had shared memories, shared experiences. They had never been in the same room together, but they had walked the same ground, stood under the same sun, looked up at the same moon, even if they had done so centuries apart.

Susan hadn't cried at funeral of her parents and siblings. She hadn't cried at Eustace's, or Jill's, or the Professor's. But, sat at the back of a church filled with Polly Plummer's friends and family, Susan cried for all she had lost. As the church emptied, Susan sat and stared up at the stained glass windows. A kindly old woman sat down beside her and took one of Susan's shaking hands. “Did you know her well?” the woman asked, and Susan shook her head. “No,” she said. “I hardly knew her at all.”

Susan had just one black dress, and she wore it for each of the funerals. When she got back after the last one she took the dress off and burnt it, watching the fire consume it, wearing her stockings and one of Edmund's old shirts. The flames licked around the fabric and Susan watched, kept watching until the fire died out and left only smoke rising from the charred remnants of the fabric.

She got up and started to pack.

-

Susan moved to America, where her parents had taken her once before. She stayed away from the countryside, from trees that looked as though they might talk and rivers that might sing, and learned her way around New York instead, looking up at skyscrapers and smiling.

She got a job in an office and worked hard even if there was nowhere to go from where she was, because the value of hard work was something Edmund had taught her and she had vowed to honour him with it.

She hit obstacle after obstacle after obstacle and kept going.

-

Susan Pevensie had fire in her veins. She thought that if the Narnians saw her now, they would not call her Susan the Gentle.

-

Susan Pevensie fell in love with a man who looked at her and saw a warrior, who saw more than just the pretty face and painted nails. Susan Pevensie fell in love with a man who saw her as an equal, and she would not have settled for any less.

She had once been a queen; she would not allow herself to be treated as less than person.

-

When Susan found out she was pregnant, her husband cried with joy. Later, laying together in bed, he would ask her if she wanted to name the child after one of the people she had lost. “You carry them around with you,” he said softly. “You always will. But maybe this will help.”

He saw the way her grief weighed on her, even now. It was one of the reasons she loved him, that he could look past her straight back and see the way her grief tried to pull her down. One of the reasons he loved her was that she didn't let it.

When their daughter was born she had Peter's eyes, Lucy's laugh and Edmund's determination, but her name was her own.

Susan told her daughter bedtime stories about a faraway land you could find through a wardrobe, a land with talking animals and trees that danced. She told her daughter stories of a white witch defeated by four children and a lion, of fauns with umbrellas and voyages to the edge of the world. Her hands shook, so she held her daughter's to keep them steady

“Why are you crying, Mummy?” her little girl asked once. “It's not a sad story, is it?”  
“No, sweetheart,” Susan said, smiling. “Not this one."


End file.
